The Man in the Twilight eBook

Bull Sternford was sprawling in the race of water.
Nancy, too, was hurled floundering in the scuppers.
They were flung and beaten, crashing about in the
swirling sea that swept over the vessel’s submerged
rail.

Bull struggled furiously. Every muscle was straining
with the effort of it. A fierce anxiety was in
his eyes as he fought his way foot by foot towards
the saloon companion. The handicap was terrible.
There was practically no foothold, for the vessel
was riding at an angle of something like forty-five
degrees. Then, too, he had but one hand with
which to help himself along. The other was supporting
the dead-weight of the body of the unconscious girl.

At last, breathless and nearly beaten, he reached
his goal and clutched desperately at the door-casing
of the companion. He staggered within. And
as he did so relief found expression in one fierce
exclamation.

“Hell!” he cried. And clambered down,
bearing his unconscious burden into the safety of
the vessel’s interior.

CHAPTER X

IN QUEBEC

It was the final stage of her journey. Nancy
was on her way up from the docks, where she had left
the staunch Myra discharging her cargo.

It was that triumphant return to which she had always
looked forward, for which she had hoped and prayed.
Her work was completed. It had been crowned with
greater success than she had dared to believe possible.
Yet her triumph somehow found her unelated, even a
shade depressed.

A belated sense of humour battled with her mood.
There were moments when she wanted to laugh at herself.
There were others when she had no such desire.
So she sat gazing out of the limousine window, as though
all her interest were in the drab houses lining the
way, and the heavy-coated pedestrians moving along
the sidewalks of the narrow streets through which
they were passing.

It was winter all right, for all no snow had as yet
fallen, and the girl felt glad that it was so.
It suited her mood.

Once or twice she took a sidelong glance at the man
seated beside her; but Bull Sternford’s mood
was no less reticent than her own. Once she encountered
the glance of his eyes, and it was just as the vehicle
bumped heavily over the badly paved road.

“We can do better in the way of roads up at
Sachigo,” he said with a belated smile.

“You surely can,” Nancy admitted readily.
“The roads down here in the old town are terrible.
This old city of ours could fill pages of history.
It’s got beauties, too, you couldn’t find
anywhere else in the world. But it seems to need
most of the things a city needs to make it the place
we folk reckon it is.”